We would not, Eusebius, have all their wrongs righted—­so lovely is the moral beauty of their wonderful patience in enduring them.  What—­if they were in a condition to legislate and impose upon us some of their burdens, or divide them with us?  What man of your acquaintance could turn dry-nurse—­tend even his own babes twelve hours out of the twenty-four?

A pretty head-nurse would my Eusebius make in an orphan asylum.  I should like to see you with twins in your arms, both crying into your sensitive ears, and you utterly ignorant of their wants and language.  And I do think your condition will be almost as bad, if you publish your catalogue of wrongs in your own name.  By all means preserve an incognito.  You will be besieged with wrongs—­will be the only “Defender of the Faithful”—­not knight-errant, for you may stay at home, and all will come to you for redress.  You will be like the author, or rather translator, of the Arabian Tales, whose window was nightly assailed, and slumber broken in upon, by successive troops of children, crying “Monsieur Galland if you are not asleep, get up—­come and tell us one of those pretty stories.”  Keep your secret.  Now, the mention of the Arabian Tales reminds me of Sinbad—­there is a true picture of man’s cowardice; what loathsome holes did he not creep into to make his escape when the wife of his bosom was sick, and he understood the law that he was to be buried with her.  It is all very well, in the sick chamber, for the husband to say to his departing partner for life—­“Wait, my dearest—­I will go with you.”  She is sure, as La Fontaine says in his satire, reversing the case, “to take the journey alone.”  This is all talk on the man’s side—­but see what the master of the slave woman has actually imposed upon her as a law.  The Hindoo widow ascends the funeral pile, and is burnt rejoicing.  What male creature ever thought of enduring this for his wife?—­this wrong, for it is a grievous wrong thus to tempt her superior fortitude.  It was not without reason that, in the heathen mythology, (and it shows the great advancement of civilization when and wherever it was conceived,) were deified all great and noble qualities in the image of the sex.  What are Juno, Minerva, and Venus, but acknowledgments of the strength, wisdom, fortitude, beauty, and love, of woman, while their male deities have but borrowed attributes and ambiguous characters?  It is a deference—­perhaps unintentionally, unconsciously—­paid to the sex, that in every language the soul itself, and all its noblest virtues, and the personification of all virtue, are feminine.